Kremlinden Lab Rejects User Bill of Rights
by Alphaville Herald on 13/09/05 at 5:22 am
In a disappointing ruling by Chairman Rosedale and Kremlinden Lab, a popular user-initiated proposal to institutionalize avatar rights has been rejected without credible justification. The proposal, called for the following rights:
freedom of speech
freedom of expression in builds
freedom of press
freedom to bear arms in combat areas
the right to know charges against oneself
the right to self-representation and appeal
Kremlinden Lab, rejected the proposal, classifying it as “Can’t Do”, stating that “it [would] require development time.” Yep, allowing free press and free speech sure eats up those programmers’ time cards. Geez guys, if you are going to lie, could you at least try to come up with a halfway credible lie?
Prokofy Neva
Oct 7th, 2005
No, freedom of the press belongs to him who owns the press. The platform providers own the platform, but they themselves claim it is a user-created world, and the users create the institutions and the customary law eventually. They have considerable ownership rights in owning sims and owning intellectual property, even with all the new clawbacks in the new TOS and the rendering of all value to nullity, designed to limit litigation. Even with all that, the customer base becomes a force to conjure with, and to keep that base, the games and platforms are going to have to offer more free worlds. Users will make them free and push the envelop, the companies will have to catch up.
Hayden hedges
Oct 7th, 2005
Or possibly a very small, yet hideously vocal, minority will continue to whine and vent because they can’t get their own way. what I don’t understand is this. Why do you care? It’s a game! Yes, it’s a deep one but hey, switch of your PC and there’s a whole real world out there full of the things you desire.
Joe Public
Oct 7th, 2005
I’ve said it before Herr Proky…if you think it’s so fucking easy quit your whining about bullshit “toilatarian” commercial environments and start your own. Croquet is begging for people to pick up the ball and run with it.
Why don’t you be a real innovator and put your money where your mouth is, instead of annoying the crap out of companies /people that want to do things their way? If the market kills them that’s their problem.
Let’s see how the market treats your system…
Urizenus
Oct 7th, 2005
Joe Public says: “In a commercial service on signup you ackowledge you will comply with the service providers TOS. If you don’t like their TOS, don’t sign up…or leave if you find you don’t like it. It’s not like the rl universe where so many people are simply powerless to make even a simple choice like that.”
You realize of course that for a lot of people it is easier to move to a different state or country than leave a game where they are making their entire living or conducting their entire social life. I mean please, after two years of discussing this on the Herald, all you Game Company Loyalists have been able to come up with is the eternal mantra: “they own it so they can do what they want with it.” No one bought that when the friends of King George spewed it in the American revolution (colonies are property of the King or the Penn family or…) and I don’t see why I should buy it now.
And why one should have to surrender their free speech to go to work or meet their friends is utterly beyond me.
Please, after two years couldn’t you guys come up with *one* argument?
…
thought not.
Joe Public
Oct 7th, 2005
“You realize of course that for a lot of people it is easier to move to a different state or country than leave a game where they are making their entire living or conducting their entire social life.”
Rubbish…I’ve moved countries many times and I can vouch for the fact that it’s a hell of a lot more stressfull than terminating a service contract. If you want to get into the business aspects then evaluating the TOS and QOS issues are matters of due diligence and your appetite for the risks involved in basing your income stream on an emerging market/technology platform and the associated company developing it.
The issue of virtual/internet addiction is now fairly well recognised as a serious downside of these technologies and maybe that needs to be looked at as part of the “problem” that some people seem to have with this virtual rights bs.
Market forces, both internal in terms of the economic power that power users have to influence company development and external in terms of competitors, will have more influence on the feature development and usage rights than a bunch of academics with too much time on their hands whining about avatar rights.
Joe Public
Oct 7th, 2005
and just for the record I’m not an LL fanboy.
I have my own issues with LL and the way they freely mine user generated IP and ideas for their own benefit/career advancement.
But I still think some of you have waaaaaaaaaay to much time on your hands.
Urizenus
Oct 7th, 2005
“Rubbish …I’ve moved countries many times and I can vouch for the fact that it’s a hell of a lot more stressfull than terminating a service contract.”
I didn’t say it was easier *for you*, I said it was easier for people who make their entire incomes and have their social lives online. I’m guessing that doesn’t include you.
You want to treat this as an exercise in market risk assessment, but one can play that game with geographical homelands as well. The world is full of regugees who left their home countries because of oppressive conditions there. They calculated the risks and benefits of staying vs. leaving and they left, so you can say they are voting with their feet, or are trading up in the marketplace of potential homelands. But still we usually think that it is too bad that they had to leave and we try to make the world a better place — one where people don’t have to keep leaving oppressive and unfair environments. Funny that as our lives become more electonically mediated you think we should abandon that simple idea. It will be a pretty grim future if you get your way.
Joe Public
Oct 7th, 2005
I acknowledge the travel comment was from my perspective only.
It’s an early market, and like the evolution of the internut, many different levels and forms of systems will be available.
From the Korporate KremlindenLabs (sic) to fully open source freewheeling *true* anarachy online.
As for the social side there are many substitute technolgies available for free to connect people should, for whatever reason, you need to leave the mainline drug of fully 3d oppressness you call SL.
Sure, there is an investment in building and maintaining the virtual world elements that would be extremely painful to part with, but if your so-called friends refuse to communicate with you via forum, email, irc, phone, fax, f2f, kazaa, skype or any other freely available communication tool then could you really call them a true friend? Is that a true relationship that you have built up, if it is only sustainable by one method of interaction? I would posit…no.
I wonder what would happen if all that energy you put into whining about such issues with obviously restrictive commercial profit driven environments was instead directed towards actually developing such a free system as you envisage?
Talking/bitching about it ain’t gonna make it happen…a prototype that demonstrates it might. Croquet and other platforms exist for a reason, you know.
Antje
Oct 8th, 2005
Say it ain’t so Joe!
Urizenus
Oct 8th, 2005
One year ago today I gave a talk about how Croquet etc. were the wave of the future for precisely this reason, but so far open source just hasn’t gelled in the domain of gaming. Don’t know why, but you know, its hard to compete with companies that can put tens of millions of dollars of content into their platforms. Maybe that will change.
But about talking/bitching : What I want to know is how come when people bitch about the Yankees/Mets/Red Sox/Dodgers/ etc, no one tells them to get a life? Its fun to bitch. Some people like it so much, they can’t resist bitching about free speech advocates bitching on The Second Life Herald. Imagine that: metabitchers!
Joe Public
Oct 9th, 2005
ok…it ain’t so!
Someone has to play counterpoint to prokofy’s constant whine.
Neil Claxton
Feb 18th, 2007
The only infringements on freedom of anything i’ve seen comes from other residents. LL Seems to feel that if a few people complain then it’s a problem, if they took action against everything any single person complained about, then people would view that as heavy handed.
Hate speech is never protected in america. So if nazis or whoever are promoting hate, then that seems fine to stop.
Why do we need the right to bear arms in combat areas? that’s why it’s a combat area.
People seem to be mixing up SL and FL.
You didn’t agree to a democratic process or any rights to anything other than the IP you created. Pure democracy doesn’t work on a large scale every single person can’t go to a forum and discuss and vote, that’s why there are representative democracies like the US, it allows a reasonable amount of self determination with a reasonable amount of accessibility.
This isn’t the real world. We have the right to go about our business and not harm or infringe on anyone else’s right to peace and domestic tranquility. It’s the duty of the individual to act like an adult, that may be hard for some.
freedom of speech who censors?
freedom of expression in builds neighbors might complain, but what buildings have been censored?
freedom of press again, seems to be plenty of freedom of expression
freedom to bear arms in combat areas maybe a lack of combat areas
the right to know charges against oneself never having been charged, i’d assume they don’t just ban people unless the story and screen cap are self explanatory.
the right to self-representation and appeal again this comes down to how discipline is handed out.
these just sound like a laundry list of things that we should be working on guaranteeing to people in RL who are under real oppressive governments. and arguing here isn’t song anything.
the groups wanting these rights don’t have much credibility since they are involved in terrorist activities, maybe there would be more support if it truly represented the wishes of the population and not a noisy minority that claims popular support but mostly seems to be the group that benefit from the changes.
I’ve never seen a Linden in the world ever. Presumably because I don’t need any intervention.
Self rule means you rule yourself, use your moral compass and behave.